India is the spiritual home of cricket: Ellyse Perry

RCB did some heavy shuffling of paddles in the WPL auction that saw them landing a string of big names for the upcoming edition of the tournament. The Royal Challengers will kickstart their campaign in the WPL on the 5th of March as they take on the Delhi Capitals at the Brabourne Stadium in the fray’s first double-header.

Out of all the big names that were landed by RCB, one of the elites was Australia’s iconic all-rounder, Ellyse Perry who was roped in for a staggering sum of INR 1.7 crore. Her addition to the side provides that all important balance between the batting and the bowling units and also adds some valuable leadership to the side.

Talking in a press conference that was held in the Aussie women’s camp currently stationed in South Africa for the Women’s T20 World Cup, Perry spoke at length about how impactful India has been in developing cricket as a whole.

Perry said, “From my perspective, I don't think any of us ever led the conversation in terms of monetary value. I think there's something at play that's much bigger than that. Of course, remuneration and the chance to earn that kind of money is wonderful, but much larger than that, I think, is just the general growth of the sport right around the world.”

Shedding some light on what India is to the sport, she further added, “India is kind of, I guess, the spiritual home of cricket in a lot of senses. And I think now that women are starting to have a really strong presence in the Indian market and also in the Indian game, that is so much more important than any kind of dollar value that is placed on any player. So from that perspective, the chat was just around wanting to be involved.”

The Australian all-rounder concluded by saying, “Of course, after the auction, those discussions come in about certain value and how much people are sold for, which in itself is a weird kind of concept to swallow. But yeah, I just think it's so much bigger than that. The discussion from us as a group was just what it's going to do for the game, not so much what it's going to do for an individual.”